The Middle East washes over Berlin

It is said that art reflects life.  If so, the Middle East seems to be taking over Europe.

The prestigious Berlinale, the annual Berlin International Film Festival that concluded its 11-superstar-packed days this weekend, made a sharp and strife-filled turn towards the Mediterranean.

The urgency of matters may also have been reflected in an historic move: for the first time, the festival’s top prize, the Golden Bear, was awarded to a documentary film.

“Fire at Sea,” a shattering documentary about the Syrian refugee crisis, took home the Golden Bear, granted by a seven-person jury headed this year by the American actress Meryl Streep.

Directed by the Italian Gianfranco Rosi, the film takes an unflinching look at the lives of refugees stranded on the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, where tens of thousands of refugees have arrived in an attempt to reach the European Union over the last two decades. Thousands more have died trying.

From the podium, Rosi dedicated his prize to the people of Lampedusa “who open their hearts to other peoples.”

The Berlinale, an extravaganza that claims to be the world’s largest film festival (434 movies were screened this year), is a key event in the run-up to the Oscars.

Rosi was born in Asmara, Eritrea. In 1977, at the age of 13, he was swept away to safety in Italy on a military plane, leaving his parents behind.

“I hope to bring awareness,” he said as he accepted the golden trophy from Streep. “It is not acceptable that people die crossing the sea trying to escape from tragedies.”

A Tunisian movie and two Israeli films also were also recognized with major prizes.

The Tunisian actor Majd Mastoura won the Silver Bear for best actor for his role in “Inhebbek Hedi,” a love story directed by Mohamed Ben Attia about a young man torn between a traditional and a modern way of life in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.

The movie, Ben Attia’s first feature film, also walked off with the prize for best debut feature. Variety calls it “an  adept and absorbing drama”in which a love trangle and-gasp!- some very tame sex scenes appear.

“I give this gift to the Tunisian people, all the martyrs of the revolution, all of those who contributed to the revolution,” he said, “I hope we will continue being free, being happy, producing good art.”

Nina Menkes, a prizewinning filmmaker whose own first feature documentary premiered at the 2005 Berlinale, winning the FIPRESCI Award (International Federation of Film Critics Award) was nonplussed by the Mideast takeover of Berlin’s film summit. “I think the crisis in the Middle East cannot really be exaggerated in terms of its impact on the global community,” she said, speaking with The Media Line.  “It’s like it was with the cold war— that old story! Russia and the West!—but now it’s really the whole Arab world quote-unquote versus the West— that’s the construction, that is not necessarily the reality, but that is the mainstream perception everybody has at the moment.”

She is joining the stream. Her next project, a feature film called Minotaur, “a radical new way to approach this whole issue,” is contemporary retelling of Greek myth within Old City of Jerusalem, in which Theseus is a Palestinian. “It’s a very topical subject,” she says. “The entire Western world feels deeply affected by events in the Middle East and the Arab world.”

The Panorama Audience award went to Israeli director Udi Aloni for his sixth movie, a feature film called “Junction 48” that tells the story of two Palestinian hip-hop rappers living in the dusty, decidedly unprosperous, mixed Jewish-Arab city of Lod, dually battling Israeli oppression and their own conservative society.

Samar Qupty, an actress in “Junction 48”, told Reuters she saw the hip-hop film as revolutionary.

“We are representing ourselves by the new generation without trying to prove anything to anyone, with our ‘goods’ and ‘bads’,” she said. “We are trying to present what the real new generation is trying to do without making the reality look any better or any worse.” 

Before knowing he’d won the coveted prize, Aloni was fleetingly caught on camera criticizing the current Israeli government, which he called “fascist.” He urged German Chancellor Angela Merkel to stop supplying Israel with submarines. He later told Israeli Channel 10 television that his comments “were directed against the Israeli government and not against the country, which I love. In contrast to the prime minister who spreads hatred, my movie spreads love and co-existence.”

Aloni’s film, almost entirely in Arabic, benefited from the support of Israel’s Culture Ministry.

Culture Minister Miri Regev responded that Aloni’s statements constituted “clear proof that artists who subvert the state, defame it and hurt its legitimacy should not be funded by the tax payer. A sane country should not assist slanderers and denouncers who malign it, immediately after drinking from its coffers.”

Tomer and Barak Heymann, also Israelis, received the Panorama Documentary prize for their film “Who's Gonna Love Me Now?”

The Heymann brothers' documentary tells the tale of a gay, HIV-positive Israeli man living in London, who was kicked out of the kibbutz he grew up on and whose life feels pointless until he becomes a member of the London Gay Men's Chorus.